Democratic Republic of the Congo

AFREWATCH promotes an equitable use and exploitation of natural resources in African countries, and in the DRC in particular.

The overarching goal of the Carter Center’s Extractive Industries Governance Project in the DRC is to advance transparency and accountability in the extractive sector. Working with national civil society organizations, the Center strengthens partners’ capacity to monitor, analyze, and report on specific mining projects and sector-wide governance issues.

In 2013, the Good Shepherd International Foundation and Bon Pasteur Kolwezi – the local development partner, affiliate with the Good Shepherd sisters – started a program in DRC to assist women, girls and children from artisanal mining communities of Domaine Marial, an isolated, impoverished and underserved cobalt mining area around the city of Kolwezi. Over the years the program, through a holistic model of intervention integrating education, alternative livelihoods and social protection was able to reach almost 35,000 people in 8 artisanal mining communities.

Resource Matters is a non-profit organization that seeks to help mitigate the natural resource paradox, namely pervasive poverty in resource-rich countries. It researches its root causes and advocates better resource governance.The organization carries out the following activities: (1) Research, documentation and critical analysis of politics, laws, norms and practices in natural resource governance. (2) Promotion of transparency in the natural resource sector and accountability of decision-makers that are able to influence resource management. (3) Facilitation of knowledge-sharing amongst actors working in different natural resource sectors. (4) Skill strengthening of actors that help promote better resource governance

The Southern Africa Resource Watch was founded in 2007 and operated as a project within the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA). Its location and operations were primarily in SADC, well known as the world’s richest region in terms of extractive resources. While its establishment was related to the global natural resources boom of the 2000s, SARW outlived that specific economic boom as well as numerous extractive industry cycles over the years.

Dynamique des Groupes des Peuples Autochtones (DGPA) is a network of around 43 organisations, including indigenous forest peoples’ groups, working to secure the rights of indigenous peoples, as well as improve recognition of the role that they can play in protecting forests and associated biodiversity. The organization holds important publications on the status of indigenous Batwa populations in the country that can be accessed through its publication page.